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When Canada's first 24-hour all-sports talk radio station launched 15 years ago today, there were almost as many skeptics as there were listeners.

That's saying a lot since a fair number of curious sports fans tuned in during the FAN 1430's first days before it moved up the dial to 590.

"A lot of people in this business said we'd never last and that we'd be back doing oldies in a month," says special events co-ordinator Rick Hart, one of several who were on staff when Bob McCown's Prime Time Sports launched the station in 1992. "Well, we knew that couldn't happen because we'd sold our (music) library.

"But there were many days I came in wondering if I'd have a job by the end of the day. So to be where we are today is very gratifying."

Where the FAN 590 is today is at the top of its game. It celebrates its 15th anniversary as one of the five top-rated sports talk stations in North America and is enjoying its highest profits ever.

"The FAN knows its audience and the audience knows what it's getting," says Gary Belgrave, president of the Radio Marketing Bureau. "That's why it appeals to advertisers trying to reach that audience."

That audience is adult males, especially adult males who live and breathe sports. And while the quality of the content ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous – in-depth interviews on serious subjects often sandwiched between juvenile banter of the so's-your-old-man genre – the FAN definitely has found its niche.

"The formula for success is be a great talk station, not necessarily a great sports station," says vice-president and general manager Nelson Millman, who became program director in 1996. "When hockey was out two years ago, we withstood that because we had become a good talk radio station."

When the FAN launched, it was an experiment born of desperation.

"Sports was always a big part of the station," says McCown. "Everything else had failed, so they figured they might as well try this."

Then program director Alan Davis based the concept on New York's WFAN, which started the all-sports revolution in 1988.

Whether Davis was a genius or simply a desperate man isn't clear, but he and his Telemedia bosses could not have picked a better time to launch.

The Jays were heading to their first World Series and the Leafs came out of nowhere to ride all the way to the Stanley Cup semifinals.

As rights holder for both teams, the FAN had lucked into the perfect storm. It rode that to make its mark in other ways, too.

McCown and Norm Rumack made waves by being outrageous, opinionated and at times rude.

"I broke every rule of broadcast journalism," says Rumack, who still has the same late-night time slot today. "I was the ultimate homer; I was yelling and screaming at people on the air. A lot of people thought I was insane, but I think I was one of the guys who helped put the station on the map."

But the storm abated quickly and almost took the FAN with it.

Two years after it launched, the FAN was hit by a devastating baseball lockout followed by a crushing hockey strike. That not only took away built-in audiences but left bewildered hosts with little fodder.

The station lost millions and there were doubts it would survive. It did, but some didn't. Shows were rejigged and among the first casualties were McCown and Mike Hogan, both of whom were subsequently rehired.

Then somebody made a wise decision: the station dumped both the Jays and Leafs games, ridding itself of costly contracts.

That not only made the station financially viable, but forced it to focus more on talk than play-by-play. Though the FAN has since reclaimed the Blue Jays, the property is substantially cheaper thanks in part to the fact the team and radio station share the same owner.

On the air, the ride was a rocky one at times.

Announcers had to apologize for both anti-Semitic remarks as well as anti-Muslim remarks, which if nothing else shows equal-opportunity offending.

Then there was the time one host meant to say blow-dry, but got the last syllable wrong and landed the station in hot water. An open microphone caught the morning crew in an obscenity-filled chat about who had failed to bring breakfast to the studio.

And who could forget Rumack doing the live play-by-play of a hair transplant?

"That might have been the craziest thing I ever heard," says announcer Barb DiGiulio, another Day-Oner.

The FAN fought off competitors, too. When the Team 1050 came along, it stole so many FAN employees that Millman sarcastically faxed the competition a staff list in case anyone had been missed.

The FAN no longer needs to scramble for attention, but new challenges lie ahead. With satellite radio starting to walk and the Internet rolling along, the FAN has to find new listeners.

A changing city means that hockey and Jays talk aren't necessarily going to keep the ratings up.

"The key is to be local," says Millman. "It's home teams first and then teams that affect home teams.

"But we also have to take a serious look at how multicultural this city is. Did I ever think we'd be running soccer on Saturday mornings? No.

"But times are changing and we have to keep up."

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